21st Century Hungarian Language Survival in Transylvania

This volume examines the present-day situation of Hungarian as a minority language in Romania. It is an important addition to the study of the Hungarian language in the diaspora that should be of interest not only to linguists and sociologists also sociolinguists but to historians, political or social scientists, educators and dialectologists as well. The problems presented, albeit referring specifically to the Hungarian language in Romanian today, have parallels across borders and across all languages spoken by minorities Survival of minority languages be it Quechua in Peru, Spanish in the United States or Hungarian in the Carpathian basin depends on historical, geopolitical and sociolinguistic factors. To a large degree it also depends on the politics of the governing majority country whose regulations have repercussions on all aspects of education, work, environment and cultural and social life. The studies of this volume delve on the characteristics and stumbling blocks of minority and diaspora language use. They also point to the tools that make possible the reversal of the trend for linguistic and cultural assimilation, tools that could also open the path toward healthy multicultural and multilingual coexistence. The volume includes historical ethnographic maps of the region.